The Secret Life of Violet Grant (18 page)

“Counselors! Sidebar's concluded,” said the handsomest, snapping his fingers.

Pepper turned her chin over her luminous bare shoulder and gave him the old up-and-down. “Permission to approach the bench?”

Before the lucky young man could reply, Mums butted in between our conspiratorial shoulders.

“Excuse me,” she said.

And that, my dears, is the point at which I should have known. I should have recognized that tone of voice, that note of almost weepy triumph.

But what could I have done?

She had planned all this with the skill of a master strategist. Ludendorff had nothing on Mums. She had probably invited the Greenwalds, had probably encouraged Nick Junior to bring his attentive friends, had forged an alliance with Pepper, had filled me with champagne. She had placed every pawn in its proper square before introducing the knight to the board, armor shining.

You had to hand it to Mums.

She spoke near my ear, in her butteriest voice. “Vivian, dearest. We have a special guest I'd like you to entertain for me tonight.”

I turned.

Mums's eyes glittered as fearlessly as the Schuyler crystal. In one hand she held a drink and cigarette, and in the other she held a smiling Doctor Paul. She withdrew her arm and patted the back of his shoulder in a proprietary mother-of-the-bride way. “I think you've met already, isn't that right, Vivian?”

I turned to my sister. “Bad girl, Pepper. Very. Bad. Girl.”

B
y the time the lift clangs to a stop at the ninth floor, Violet's face is hot with shame. The attendant stares directly ahead, not meeting her eyes, and she wants to scream,
He's not my lover! Who brings a lover home to her own married flat?
But it's her own fault. If Lionel were some innocent acquaintance, she would be talking and laughing with him as they walked across the foyer and went up the lift. There would not be this guilty silence, this tense expectancy, this flush on Violet's cheeks.

The attendant opens the grille. “
Danke
,” says Violet clearly.

The lift opens up directly to their apartment, which covers the entire floor. Walter's family made a fortune in pottery a hundred years ago, and the evidence of that wealth lies everywhere: the elegant rented address in Kronenstrasse, the marble entry, the black-and-white housekeeper who takes their coats and hats and asks Violet if she and her guest will be taking refreshment.

“Thank you, Hilda, but we'll only be a few minutes,” says Violet in German.

She leads Lionel past the grand drawing room and into a smaller sitting room off the study, where Walter keeps a liquor cabinet. Lionel's cane clicks rhythmically behind her on the polished parquet floor.

“Cozy little place you've got here.”

“Walter likes to entertain.”

“And you don't?”

She opens the liquor cabinet. “What would you like? We've got just about everything, I think.”

“Brandy will do.”

She finds the brandy and the snifter, and though she pours with extreme care, the bottle still clinks against the edge of the glass, betraying the slight shake in her hands. She sets down the bottle and lifts the glass between her palms to warm the brandy.

“An expert, I see.”

“My father used to drink brandy. Well, I suppose he still does. When I wanted to ask for a favor, I started him off with a glass of his favorite.”

“An excellent strategy. Did it work?”

Violet hands him the glass and watches as he takes a sip. “Occasionally. Please sit. I don't want your surgeon to come after me, shaking his fist.”

“You first, Mrs. Grant.”

Violet lowers herself into one end of the sofa. Lionel takes a chair, exhaling just a fraction as the weight draws off his left knee. He extends the leg in a rigid line across the rug before him, nearly touching Violet's crossed ankles.

Violet curls her fingers together in her lap. The lamplight is kind to Lionel, softening his face, so that the pronounced jut of his soldier's cheekbones mellows into something more elegant. He reclines his large body, staring somewhere to Violet's left, quite at home in Walter's favorite chair. The brandy revolves drunkenly in his palm.

Violet is terrible at small talk. She waits for Lionel to speak first.

He lifts the glass and sips. “What sort of favors?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“From your father. What sort of favors did you ask?”

“My freedom, mostly. To go to college, to go to Oxford afterward. To study chemistry instead of English or history.”

“Nothing wrong with English or history.”

“There's nothing wrong with chemistry, either, unless you're a seventeen-year-old girl just out of school whose sole purpose in life is to marry well and make brilliant conversation at dinner parties.”

“But you weren't that girl.”

“No, not at all.”

He smiles and leans forward. His eyes smile at her, too, reflecting the color of the brandy in his glass. “Good. You're better this way. Anyway, if you
had
done the conventional thing, you wouldn't be here now.”

Violet springs to her feet and goes to the window. “And wouldn't that be a shame.”

“I'd be devastated.”

Sexual attraction
. Violet knows what it is; she knows she's feeling it now, that she's felt it from the moment he prowled into the middle of her dark laboratory room ten days ago. Why not? Lionel Richardson is a strapping, healthy specimen of a man, an animal in its prime, manifestly ready to mate. She would be made of stone if the chemistry of her body did not respond to the proximity of his.

But what should she do about it?

Outside the window, night has fallen like a cloak over the streets of Berlin, but Berlin hasn't noticed. Violet can't hear the revelry, but she knows it's there: people laughing and drinking and smoking, in the cafés along Unter den Linden and in the grand apartments around the Tiergarten. In one of those apartments, her husband is laughing and drinking and smoking, talking with his friends, politicians and generals and minor German royalty, professional American divorcées like the Comtesse de Saint-Honoré. Committing adultery in his heart, and perhaps in actual deed. Probably not even perhaps. Parties are Walter's favorite hunting ground, after all: the prey is well-groomed, is relaxed and daring with drink. Possibly, at this very instant, Walter is with another woman.

“Have I offended you, Mrs. Grant?”

She turns to face him. “Of course not. I know it was only one of your
jokes. Have you finished your brandy? You must be desperate to get back to your party.”

He hasn't finished his brandy; he's hardly touched it. He's only toying with it, back and forth between his hands. “I'm not, in fact. I think you're much more interesting than another damned party.”

“I'm not, actually.”

“You are. You're fascinating. Do you know what I love most about you?”

“I can't imagine. We hardly know each other.”

He taps the wide bowl of the snifter with one finger. “Among other things, that I could pull out a sheet of paper and a pencil and sit here and talk all night with you about bloody atoms, and it would be the most interesting and illuminating conversation I've had in years.”

Violet laughs drily. “Then why did you leave the institute in the first place, all those years ago, and join the Army? Of all things.”

“Ah.” He leans back in the chair and watches her with a speculative expression. “Funnily enough.”

“Was it something to do with Walter?”

In a swift and unexpected movement, Lionel lifts the brandy to his lips and swallows it all. Violet watches in astonishment as his throat works, as his white-tipped fingers grip the bowl.

“I know he can be difficult,” Violet says quietly.

Lionel sets the glass on the table and rises to his feet. “Listen, Mrs. Grant—”

“Violet,” says some other woman, not her at all.

“Violet.” He lingers over the vowels. His teeth gleam briefly at her. “I'm not going to tell you the story. You're loyal to him; I can see that. I believe I rather admire that about you. Add it to the list in my head, number thirty-seven:
Violet is loyal as the devil
. But if I may be unpardonably bold, I suggest you ask yourself just how well Dr. Grant returns your loyalty.”

Violet's fingers curl around the window frame. In his evening dress, Lionel looks even larger than before: the black tailcoat stretches across his
bulky shoulders, his rifle-bearing soldier's shoulders; the white waistcoat swoops below his thick chest to button trimly at his waist. There are no shades of gray to Lionel. “Walter has his own brand of loyalty.”

“Mostly to himself, I imagine.” Lionel raises his hand and taps the starched white board of his shirtfront. “I have many faults, Violet, God knows. But I know what loyalty is, and what it isn't.”

“Yes, I suppose you would.”

Lionel's hand drops away. He reaches inside his waistcoat pocket and draws out a slim gold watch. “I don't mean to vilify the chap, of course. Many sterling qualities and all that. I was in absolute awe of his intellect, back at the institute.”

“Yes, we all were.”

Lionel looks up. “I say. Would you mind if I took a peek in his study?”

•   •   •

THE STUDY
is cool and dark, having been protected from the sunshine all afternoon by a set of thick green damask curtains. Violet flicks on a lamp with nervous fingers, feeling like a child stealing a midnight peek at the Christmas presents.

“Ah, that's it.” Lionel sticks his hand in his pocket and limps along one wall. “Exactly as I pictured. The antique Persian rug—Tabriz, isn't it? The bookshelves with their glass fronts, all locked up, of course. Are those his notebooks?”

“Yes. He arranges them by subject and then by date.”

“Does he let you have the keys?”

“Of course he does.” Violet leans against the wall and watches him as he moves about, running his finger along the glass, lifting aside one damask curtain to glance at the street below. “That is, he's told me where he keeps them, in case he needs something retrieved.”

Lionel laughs. “He was always such a suspicious chap. Rivals lurking around every corner, twirling their mustaches, working to undermine him.”

“Occasionally he's right.”

“Do you ever read them? His notebooks, I mean.” Lionel passes his thumb along the edge of the green-shaded lamp on the desk and pulls the little chain at the corner. A gentle glow pools atop the immaculate baize surface.

“Not really. I have my own line of inquiry now.”

“Yes, you do. You're looking for this mysterious neutron.”

“
Elusive
neutron.” Because of the brandy, she allows herself a sigh.

“For what it's worth, I think the theory makes a great deal of sense. You can't have all those extra electrons crammed into the nucleus itself, and nothing else explains the neutral electric charge. Number of protons must equal number of electrons.”

“Walter would say it's a made-up particle, the neutron. That we've made up its existence to fit the facts of the case, the atomic weight being twice the number of protons in the nucleus. A convenience.”

“That doesn't mean it's not there. Isn't as if we've seen and felt a bloody electron, either, but we know it exists. You see? Aren't you marvelous. I could talk like this for hours with you. I could sit with you and count damned flashing particles for the rest of my life.”

“Don't talk nonsense.” But she blushes and turns her head, watching him from the peripheral limits of her vision.

Lionel lowers himself into the chair and sends her a devilish look. “Rather handsome, this. All sorts of possibilities come to mind.”

“I suppose you used to play pranks on your headmasters.”

He leans back, passing his face into shadow. “When I could. How are you enjoying Berlin, Violet?”

She shifts her feet. “I don't pay much attention to Berlin. I'm too busy with my work.”

“What's this? No play at all?” He shakes his head and
tsk
s. “Doesn't your husband take you out?”

“He knows I'm not interested in that sort of thing. Parties and endless chatter with people who don't understand.”

“I suppose it's useful for him, though. Getting to know all these important chaps, having his path smoothed. Do you think he misses the English race at all?” Lionel folds his fingers together across his middle and twiddles his thumbs.

“Oh, there's plenty of English people around. But Walter's a cosmopolitan. He loves meeting people from other countries. I'm no help at all to him in that regard, I'm afraid. He sometimes brings them here for dinner parties, and of course I do my best, but they're all so . . .” She drifts off, unable to account for the stream of unguarded words. It's the darkness, perhaps, or the conspiratorial nature of what they're doing, meeting like this in Walter's private study. Or the way Lionel sits back in Walter's chair, his gray eyes charcoal with understanding. Easy to confess her thoughts, her failings.

“Of course it's a bloody nuisance for you. All those stiff Prussian fellows. We had a dinner a year or so ago, a regimental dinner, to which we invited a few visiting German colonels. Frightfully clever and all that, but they
would
say the most outspoken things.” He smiles. “I nearly challenged my opposite number to a duel by the end of it. Whereas he probably wondered why I kept going on about the weather.”

“And yet you've been very outspoken tonight.”

“Only to you.” He lifts himself forward and dribbles his fingers on the desktop. “Were you awfully uncomfortable, then? Who was there?”

“Oh, von this and von that. I don't recall. That's part of my problem, you see: I can't keep names straight, and I can't pretend interest in someone who doesn't interest me.”

“Yes, that's number thirty-eight.”

“Number thirty-eight?”

“On my list.
Violet cannot tell a lie.
Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Not at all.”

Lionel takes a cigarette case and lighter from the inside pocket of his tailcoat. The silk lining gleams in the yellow light from the lamp. Violet looks down and listens to the snap of the metal case, the scratch of the
lighter. “There was only one interesting fellow. The nephew of that old general, the one who laid siege to Paris in the seventies.”

“Oh, von Moltke, you mean? By God, was he there? I'd have given a hundred pounds to meet him.”

“Yes, he was there. I didn't mind talking to him. He actually talked to me as if I were a human being, instead of a . . .”

Lionel smiles again. “A terribly attractive woman?”

Violet has always viewed with contempt her shallow pretty-prettiness, her large blue eyes and chestnut hair and rosebud mouth, far better suited to chocolate boxes and Coca-Cola advertisements than laboratories. She despises the way it makes her seem younger than she already is, the way it makes men stare at her mouth as she speaks, not listening to her words. Not that she imagines herself a great beauty. If she were really beautiful, beautiful like the Comtesse de Saint-Honoré, formidably beautiful, powerfully beautiful, it would be easier. People obeyed the comtesse; people rose and fell according to her whim. People respected that sort of beauty, imperfect though it was. It was like a being unto itself, an idol to be worshipped, mythic. Violet's beauty—her prettiness, she reminds herself, for that's what it is, a very conventional combination of features to which the human animal was trained to respond—diminishes her.